Mississippi (1 of 5)
by Foxsong
Summary: Love, death, the Consortium, and people who are not what they appear to be. **2001 Spooky winner.**


Mississippi by Foxsong

Finally, fi-i-i-inally finished on 9-23-01! :-D

*** 2001 Spooky Awards: Second Place, Outstanding X-File. Third Place, Outstanding Long Story. Third Place, The Map Room Award for Outstanding Fic Set Outside Washington DC. Third Place, The Mulder In Jeopardy Award for Outstanding MulderTorture. ***

Rated R.

Timeframe: Season 7.

Category/Keywords: X, A, MSR/UST. Elements of this story will make it a rough ride for some readers, but to delineate them here in the headers will spoil the story's impact.

Spoilers: Assumes familiarity with Christmas Carol, Emily, Herrenvolk, Talitha Cumi, Sein und Zeit/Closure, and makes a few passing references to other eps.

Feedback to foxsong@earthlink.net.

Archive at will, but please let me know where, and provide a link back to my site at http://.trax.to/the_foxsong_files. 

Disclaimer: "The X-Files" TM and copyright Fox and its related entities. All rights reserved. Neither this work of fiction nor its writer is authorized by Fox. 

Author's notes: This story was born, way back when Hollywood AD was just a rumor on the spoiler boards, from speculation as to what kind of part Téa Leoni might play in an X-F ep. One day as I was mulling it over I happened to play the Paula Cole song 'Mississippi,' and it all began to fall into place. So turn the song up loud, and picture Téa in the starring role. She was a delight to work with. ;-)

Many thanks and much love to MaybeAmanda and Char Chaffin, who stuck with me through the whole thing, and who have a halfway decent idea what the story really means.

Summary: Investigating a series of homicides, Mulder and Scully find that other lives than their own have been touched by the Consortium; putting together the pieces of that puzzle, they begin to put together the pieces of their own.

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Prologue

She slipped down the hallway in the dark, hugging the wall as if to make herself less visible. The vinyl soles of the attached slippers on her flannel pajamas scuffed softly against the hardwood floor. She crouched down on the landing at the top of the stairs and waited, listening to the men's voices.

On another night, if she'd been wakeful like this, she would have gone the other way down the hall and found Mama. Daddy stayed up late, reading his papers from work, but Mama always went to bed right after tucking her in; she knew she could always go to Mama and stay with her for a little while. But Mama was over at Aunt Mary's house tonight. She'd been staying there a lot these past few months. Mama told her Aunt Mary was very sick and that she needed Mama's help sometimes.

She hugged her stuffed toy bunny closer to her chest. If Daddy had been alone, she would have gone down, but the man from work was here with him again. He had been coming over more and more often on the nights that Mama was at Aunt Mary's. He and Daddy sat in the living room and talked late into the night. 

She never knew what to make of it when the man from work was there. The way he and Daddy talked was different from the way other grownups talked when Mama and Daddy had parties and she would sit on the landing listening to them. They never turned on the hi-fi and played records. She never heard the clinking of ice cubes in glasses that meant they were having drinks. There was no laughter. Their voices were quiet and serious and they used words she didn't understand.

"It's really only the next logical step, Edward," the man from work was saying, "and you've certainly understood the necessity from the beginning. I've never made any pretenses about it. We've all known it would be a road of sacrifice."

"I know. I know." Her father's voice was grim. "But it's a bad time. What with Mary sick..."

"Yes," said the visitor. "I was... sorry... to hear she's been taken ill."

"She's dying."

Aunt Mary was...? Her eyes widened. She pressed herself against the wall and crept a little farther toward the edge of the stairs.

There was a pause before the man spoke. "Not every aspect of the process has been perfected, Edward. We are working with unknown factors, feeling our way along -- "

There was a sudden thump, as if one of the men had slapped his hand down hard on the armrest of his chair. "How is that supposed to reassure me? How am I supposed to watch her die, and let you take my little girl? You know Arlene can't have another child. If anything happened to Paula..."

She sat up sharply on the landing at the sound of her name. They were talking about her. Her! She hugged the bunny tighter and leaned forward, holding her breath, trying to hear every word.

"It will take, at most, two weeks," the visitor said. "I assure you that she will be returned unharmed. Perhaps your wife might be persuaded to move into her sister's home for the duration of the procedure? You might be able to keep it from her entirely by that means."

Daddy snorted. "Mary lives right across the river. Why would she pack up and move over there? It's ridiculous."

There was a long silence. She craned her neck, peering anxiously around the corner of the landing, not wanting to miss anything, but knowing somehow she must remain unnoticed.

At last the man from work spoke. "Perhaps," he said slowly," there might arise some... circumstance... that requires her constant presence there, hmm?"

"You bastard," Daddy swore softly."I should..."

"You should what, Edward? You knew from the beginning this day would come. I promise you now, as I did then, that your daughter will be returned to you. She will have no memory of the procedure." He dropped his voice; his tone became low and confidential. "You know as well as I do that it's the only way to save her."

Overcome with curiosity, she leaned just a little farther forward and looked down into the living room. Daddy was leaning over in the armchair, his head in his hands. The man from work had his back turned to her, and she couldn't see his face. All she could see was the smoke from his cigarette, rising up to wreathe his head like a halo in the lamplight.

Chapter One

The clamor of the alarm seemed distant, but after a moment Denny yawned and stretched and groped out toward the bedside table where it should have been. When her hand swiped through empty air and came down on the thick plush carpeting she came awake with a start, her heart thudding in her chest with the old familiar dread.

Not again. Oh, God, not again. 

She fell back against the cushions and choked back a sob; then, more from force of habit than from any desire to really know, raised her head to assess the situation.

She was sprawled full length on her living room sofa, still wearing yesterday's work clothes. Her shoes lay out in the middle of the floor as if she'd just walked out of them on her way into the apartment. 

She took these as good signs. Sometimes she woke half-dressed, the languid weight of her limbs telling her without doubt what she'd done the night before. Those were the mornings she might find her pantyhose stuffed haphazardly into her purse, or not find them at all. Sometimes on those mornings there was a man's business card in her bag; sometimes there was just a slip of paper with a phone number and not even a name. 

Maybe it was worse when there was nothing concrete at all to give her a hint. Maybe it was worse when her body had memories of its own that it refused to share.

Thank God, there was none of that today. She sat up, running a shaky hand through her blonde hair. The alarm still shrilled, and she rose on her long legs and went across the apartment to the bedroom and shut it off. One hand still on the clock, she glanced back toward the living room, feeling the uncertainty and the fear pooling in the pit of her stomach. She turned back, her lips pressed together in a tight line, and walked deliberately over to the answering machine on the desk.

A sheet of paper leaned partially across it, obscuring the panel of tiny lights at the bottom. Her hand paused for a moment and then snatched it away. The red light shone steadily -- no blinks. No messages.

A sigh of relief escaped her lips, and she laid both palms flat upon the desk and leaned against it heavily. No messages. Jim hadn't called. He wouldn't know she'd been out last night. There would be nothing to explain. She had no way to explain it to herself; how could she possibly explain it to him?

Mouthing a silent prayer of thanks, Denny roused herself again and stepped back from the desk. On the way to the bathroom she shed her blazer. It smelled like stale cigarette smoke. A bar this time, maybe? But her head was clear; she didn't think she'd been drinking. 

She sighed as she stepped out of her skirt; now she'd have to find time to drop these things at the cleaner's today, too. She wanted to be a little early to work -- she wanted to have everything else in the office squared away by the time those two Bureau people came in a few more days; she had promised herself she'd keep it together while they were here. It had been hard enough, even humiliating, to have to leave the Bureau and come back to Louisiana. Her AD had been understanding, even as he'd relieved her of duty, but with the blackouts, there hadn't been much of a choice. 

Denny shook her head. It was just stress, she told herself; there were too many things going on, too many things that hit too close to home. The little Raymon girl had been missing for a week. Now, hard on the heels of that, there'd been the call from the FBI yesterday. That was more than enough to trigger this blackout, she reasoned. It seemed, at least, to have been a minor one. Maybe she would have to talk to Dr. DeMontreaux about adjusting her medication again.

She reached into the shower and twisted the knob to turn on the water. She unbuttoned her blouse and as it fell from her shoulders she glanced up into the mirror and saw the unmistakable, telltale bruises on her throat and along her collarbone. She froze, staring, and this time the tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks.

Chapter Two

"Look," Mulder finally addressed the looming silence in the car, "I said I'm sorry. Can we just skip it?"

"I haven't said a thing about it, Mulder," Scully replied mildly without looking toward him.

Actually, she hadn't said anything. She hadn't needed to. Her silences were always as eloquent as speech. She didn't have to spell it out; Mulder knew she was still smarting from the way he'd taken off last week without a word to her, with just that hasty message left on her answering machine.

Admittedly, the thing had been a long shot. He'd known full well that Scully would have brushed it off without hesitation. She'd have made too much sense, he grudgingly allowed, and he'd been in no mood to be talked out of it, so he'd left the message rather than trying to talk her into coming along, and then he'd hopped a flight and spent two days on what really had turned out to be nothing at all. 

Mulder glanced over at her impassive profile, at the brown October landscape passing behind her outside the window. Yeah, it had turned out to be nothing, he thought, but ten days later he was still paying for it. 

It had been one of his rare miscalculations. For years now he had been carefully chipping away at Scully's armor, but sometimes he pushed her a little too hard, took a little bit more of a liberty than she seemed to think he'd earned. There'd be a sudden flash of fire, and after the flare she would ice over and freeze him out until she'd settled down again. He understood by now that she couldn't help it, but between the little ice ages he always managed to forget how much they hurt.

He had puzzled long and hard over what it could have been that had made Scully steel her heart the way she had. The things she had let him know about her life didn't point in any of the obvious directions. He guessed that she had buried the beginnings of her pain so deeply that even she might not be able to say anymore.

He sighed. He tried, and failed, to suppress a yawn, and Scully seemed to take pity on him at last. "We're almost there," she said, gracing him with a little smile. "Just two more exits."

He marveled anew at the effortless power she held over him. Had he really been aggravated only a moment ago? He smiled back. "Two more," he echoed, relieved. "A good night's sleep, and we can dig right in tomorrow morning."

Scully nodded. "You said you'd set up a meeting with the medical examiner?"

"Nine o'clock. She's got the latest guy on ice for you."

"Mmm-hmm." She opened the manila folder in her lap and leafed almost idly through the pages. "Although I'm not exactly sure what I should be looking for..."

"You're the only one who might know what to look for, Scully," he answered. "You're the only one -- the only pathologist, I mean -- that I know of who's seen anything like this before."

"Well..." she mused, "the manner of death, yes... but, Mulder, there's nothing here to suggest that any of these men's bodies exuded toxic fumes or acidic substances when they were stabbed."

"Stabbed in the back of the neck, Scully." He thumped one palm against the steering wheel for emphasis. "A single stab wound, made with a narrow, sharp instrument, right into the brain -- through the base of the skull. In the back of the neck."

"Yes, yes. I know," she said patiently. "It's all right here."

"Sound familiar to you, Scully?" He looked over and met her eyes, and she sighed and turned away again.

"I know what you're thinking, Mulder. But these were just men, not -- not..." She gestured helplessly. "They were just men," she repeated, closing the folder and settling her hands upon it.

"Maybe." He nodded slowly, not quite ready to concede the point. "But Scully, somebody else didn't think so."

Chapter Three

It was still early when Denny turned the grey Jeep into the parking lot. She headed for her usual parking place, with the small, tidy wooden marker reserving it for her, but was flustered for a moment to find a car in it. Jim's pickup truck was already there too, one space over, and she pulled into the unmarked space just past it. Jim was standing in front of his truck, talking to a heavyset man. Denny recognized him -- Nathan Raymon, the missing child's father. She caught her breath, almost daring to hope the news was good.

She opened her door just as Nathan was shaking Jim's hand. "Thanks, Sheriff," he was saying.

Jim shook his head a little. "I wish I had more to tell you, Nate."

"I know everybody's doing the best they can," the other man said wearily, getting into his car. "It's like... it's like I let myself have just a little bit of hope every morning on the way here. At least it gets me out of bed for another day."

The car's engine turned over. Jim scored the ground slowly with the heel of one worn boot in a gesture Denny recognized as frustration; still, his voice was steady as he said, "My best to Linda."

Raymon nodded, and closed the car door, and backed out of Denny's parking space and drove away. Jim stood, staring after the car; he didn't seem to notice as Denny came up beside him.

She reached out and rubbed her hand up and down his back. "Hey," she said.

Jim let out a long sigh and turned toward her, a sad half-smile on his lips. "Hey yourself." He leaned over to kiss her cheek. "You're early."

"You were here before me." She gestured after Raymon's car. "Does he come by every morning like that?"

Jim nodded. "Yeah. I think it makes him feel like he's doing more, even though he's already doing everything he can."

Denny looked away down the road after Nathan Raymon's car. The sun was just beginning to cast a few direct, pinkish-gold rays across the tarmac; soon the mist would burn away and you'd be able to see all the way clear down to the statues at the entrance of the park.

"The longer she's gone," she said, "the worse the odds are that we'll ever get her back."

Jim put one arm around her shoulders. "Not always. You ought to know that better than anybody, Den -- you're living proof." He gave her a brief, reassuring hug. "C'mon. Let's get to it."

She turned with him toward the entrance of the building and hoped he would write off her sudden shiver to the chill of the October morning.

Chapter Four

"Denny?" Jim asked, leaning into the open doorway. 

She looked up and slowly pushed the papers she'd been pretending to read away across the desk. 

"Your FBI people are here," he said. "You ready?"

She pushed her glasses up into place on her nose. "Yes. Thanks. Would you send them in?"

"Sure thing."

Denny took a deep breath and rose to her feet. She stepped out from behind her desk just as Jim showed a tall, dark-haired man and a small redheaded woman into the office. 

She'd have recognized them as Bureau, she thought with a twinge, even if they'd walked in off the street without any introduction at all. The conservative dark suits, the long coats that camoflaged their holstered weapons. The Look, she and her colleagues had called it in Los Angeles, and kidded each other about it. It had been one of their favorite running jokes.

She smiled carefully. "Good morning."

The man stepped forward and extended his hand. "Fox Mulder," he said as Denny reached forward to accept the handshake. "My partner, Dr. Dana Scully."

Denny nodded, turning to the woman. "Paula Dennison," she said, looking from one to the other. "Nice to meet you." The smaller woman inclined her head in acknowledgement, but said nothing; her hands remained before her, clasped around the handle of her bag. Denny took in the details -- the fine cut of her clothes, the small pearl earrings -- and felt pleased that she herself had worn her good navy wool, rather than the tweed. This woman would have noticed the difference, she felt sure.

"I appreciate your agreeing to see us on such short notice," Agent Mulder said, and Denny shook her head.

"It's no trouble, really." Her smile turned a little rueful. "All in all, Donaldsonville is a quiet place. I get a car accident now and then, or once in a while a little old lady that they find after the mailman notices she hasn't picked up the mail for a few days. These three guys floating into town are the most excitement we've had all year, other than..." She stopped, not wanting to think about Jessy Raymon now.

Agent Scully spoke for the first time. "I suppose this would seem very quiet to you -- you were with the Bureau, weren't you?" She cocked her head a little to one side and raised an eyebrow. "In California?" 

Denny paused. The breath she was taking caught for a moment in her throat. She'd noticed the unabashed way the redheaded woman had been staring around the little office since she'd come in; now she noticed the brief flicker of surprise across the tall man's face, and understood that this Scully had done some homework she hadn't shared with her partner.

Denny found her breath and willed herself to answer before her composure could slip. "Yes. I was." She hoped that would be the end of it. 

But Scully nodded and continued, "I thought I knew the name. The Mitchell case -- your work was well done."

"Thank you," Denny said, and felt a flush rise to her cheeks. She turned deliberately back toward Mulder. "I trust you received the overview of the cases in good order?" 

"Yes, thank you. I did." Denny watched the way he shot another sidelong glance at his partner even as he was nodding. 

"Good. These," she continued, "are the full case files. There are two copies, one for each of you." She picked up the folders and handed one to each agent, and leaned back against the edge of the desk, folding her arms across her chest. She tried hard to look relaxed. There was a moment's pause as the two agents opened the folders and began to leaf through them.

"No prints lifted from any of the bodies...?" Scully mused aloud, glancing up at Denny without raising her head. Something in her tone made Denny wonder whether it might be a challenge. 

"No," she returned slowly, "and, really, it's almost impossible to say whether we have a very careful killer, or whether the bodies were just in the water too long -- as you can read there, all but the most recent had been in the river for a number of days."

There was something going on here, she thought, that had very little to do with the case at hand. Why would that woman mention, of all the Bureau work Denny had ever done, the Mitchell case? She willed herself to stay calm, and was glad that both agents were still studying the casefiles instead of watching her.

As she looked at them, something in the way they stood struck her. They were a little too close for 'professional' space; this looked more personal. She noticed the way the tall man inclined just the slightest degree toward his partner and the way she, in response, shifted her weight onto the foot nearest him. Playing a hunch, Denny turned her eyes, and let her gaze linger deliberately on Scully's partner until, with her peripheral vision, she saw the smaller woman look up and take notice. Denny didn't even need to look back at her. She could fairly feel the redhead bristling.

Ah! So that was all it was -- they had a 'history,' as one of her old colleagues used to phrase it. She straightened up and squared her shoulders as if a weight had been lifted from them. "Agents," she smiled, "shall we head down to the morgue?" And she led the way from the office without looking back.

In the basement, she pushed open the door of the morgue, reaching automatically for the light switch as she entered. It was small, and not so state-of-the-art as this Agent Scully might be used to, but Denny herself had seen to every detail in the room, and she was confident that it was scrupulously clean and excellently equipped. She walked briskly across her little morgue to the bank of square metal doors and unlatched the one farthest to the left. 

"This is Mr. Charles Vaccaro," she announced, pulling the handle and rolling the slab out into the room. "Or at least, he was till about a week and a half ago, as near as we can figure." She looked up coolly across the body at Scully. "But maybe you'll want to draw your own conclusions."

"I'm sure we'll concur on most of the salient points," the other woman returned, already looking the body over with a practiced eye. "There are a few particulars that Agent Mulder would like me to look into. That's all." Scully glanced toward her partner and their eyes met; they shared a momentary look that Denny couldn't read, and then the redhead turned away and began taking off her coat. 

"Mulder," she said, hanging the coat on the rack near the door, and beginning to unfasten the buttons of the smartly-tailored blazer, "why don't you take this time to go with Sheriff Cormerais and check out those things you told him you wanted to see? I'll be fine here."

Denny saw the tall man shift his weight hesitantly from one foot to the other and back again. He watched his partner help herself to one of the freshly cleaned lab jackets hanging on the next rack over from her coat. As Scully tore the cleaners' plastic wrap from the jacket and slipped it off the hanger, he finally said, "You're sure you don't want me to wait, so you can come with us?"

"I'll do you more good here," she answered shortly, putting her arm into the first sleeve. Mulder reached out to help her into the jacket, a little hurriedly, Denny thought, as if he had just realized he should have done it sooner. The small woman pushed the wad of plastic wrap into his hand and walked back toward the slab where the corpse lay waiting. Mulder didn't try to follow; he just gazed after her, at her back. His face was blank.

Denny swung the overhead light around toward the body and turned it on. Agent Scully was already pulling the stainless-steel surgical cart toward the table; she seemed to want to start immediately. "There's a tape recorder in the drawer of the cart," Denny said. "It's ready to go."

"I carry my own. I have it right here in my bag," the smaller woman said, looking up at Denny and smiling a little for the first time. "But thank you." She leaned down to open her leather attache, and took the microcassette recorder out. 

"Then you're all set," Denny nodded. "I'll be upstairs whenever you're done. If you have any other questions, the phone's right over there. My office is marked on the intercom keys."

"Thank you," Scully said again. "I'm sure everything will be fine." She looked over at Mulder, still standing by the door, still clutching the little handful of crumpled plastic wrap. "You'll keep me posted? If I haven't heard from you by the time I'm done, I'll call you." She didn't wait for an answer; she began rearranging the instruments on the tray to her liking.

Mulder's jaw worked just a little; he nodded fractionally. Denny looked from one agent to the other. Then the tall man spoke, just a few curt words. "Fine. See you later." He turned and grasped the doorknob, and pulled the door open. 

"Agent," Denny nodded to Scully, taking her leave; the redhead returned the courtesy. Denny walked through the open doorway and into the hall.

In front of the elevator door, Mulder glanced over curiously at Denny. "I thought you might want to stick around for that autopsy," he said.

The elevator opened and Denny stepped in, turning to face Mulder as he followed. "I'm sure your partner and Mr. Vaccaro will have a lovely time all by themselves," she answered with a wry smile. "I didn't get the impression she needed any help from me."

Mulder punched the 'up' button on the elevator panel just a little more emphatically than necessary. "Yeah. I know the feeling," he said, half to himself. He glanced down at the plastic wrap in his hand as if he'd forgotten he was still carrying it.

"There's a garbage can over there, on the left," Denny said, pointing, as the elevator doors opened again. "I'll just take you back to Jim's office, and then you two can get started, if you like."

"Thanks." Mulder dropped the wad of plastic wrap into the trash can. "That would be fine."

Chapter Five

Denny turned the key in the ignition of the Cherokee and hardly heard the engine starting. Deep in thought, she had already made the left turn and driven half the way toward the bridge across the river into Darrow before she realized where she was going. She blinked and looked around as if waking from sleep; she smiled ruefully, but kept driving.

She glanced out at the river rushing under the bridge. Whenever she crossed it Denny felt as if she'd stepped across a threshold into another place. It was nothing she could articulate, but she always thought she could feel herself shaking off one way of being, shouldering another, as she looked down at the grey water. She knew that water had begun its journey far to the north in Lake Itasca, had rolled south over the miles, across the prairies, through the valleys, past farmlands and cities. Now it murmured under the bridge beneath her, whispering of some of the things it had seen, holding some of them secret, carrying them away unseen and unspoken to the Gulf of Mexico.

Denny sighed. The only secrets the river had seen fit to share lately were those of the three corpses that had washed up against the banks, there on the hairpin turn between Donaldsonville and Darrow. She glanced at the bridge in her rearview mirror and pushed down the resentful thought that the Mississippi had purposefully brought the two FBI agents into her office that morning, awakening memories she'd tried so hard to leave behind. 

She slowed the Jeep as she turned onto the narrow streets of the little town. Of course, Darrow had grown; but somehow it seemed so much smaller now than it had when she was a child. The houses had seemed grander then, the trees taller; the lawns rolled out acres wide in her memory, splashed with lazy midsummer sunshine. On the rise overlooking the river her father's house seemed to stand a little apart, as if it understood that it was closed up and empty, ashamed of its cool darkness as the evening lights came on in the houses around it.

She should sell it. She really should. She had told herself when she moved across the river into the apartment in Donaldsonville that she would put it on the market as soon as her father's estate was cleared up. Now it was going on three years since he'd died, and she hadn't been able to bring herself to do it. 

She pulled into the driveway and cut the lights. She knew what she would see if she went inside. Nothing had really been done since her father had died; the few relatives who had come had taken the things he'd wanted them to have, and she'd cleaned up the house and covered up the furniture and turned the key in the lock and walked away. She couldn't stay here alone; still, she couldn't quite let it go. Maybe, she thought sadly, somewhere in that house was the secret of where and when and how everything had begun to go wrong. Maybe that was what kept drawing her back like this.

She wasn't supposed to be back here, wasn't supposed to be stuck in this little backwoods town she thought she'd gotten away from. She'd finished near the top of her class at Quantico; she'd been recruited by the Los Angeles field office. She'd been on the way up. By now she should have been heading up a forensics division. She should have...

She sighed and bowed her head in resignation. She should have been paying attention to where she was going just now, that's what she should have been doing; now she'd have to hurry to be on time to Dr. DeMontreaux's office. She reached for the light switch and put the Jeep into reverse and backed out onto the street.

Chapter Six

"But that," Scully asked, tapping her forefinger slowly against the edge of the laminated menu, "is the *least* deep-fried thing you have?"

"Yes, ma'am." The young waitress was clearly puzzled to meet a customer whose taste ran to food that was anything other than breaded, deep-fried, chicken-fried, smothered in cheese, or swimming in bacon fat or thick brown gravy. "That or, like I said -- a plain house salad, ma'am."

Scully suppressed a sigh. They'd chosen the little diner for lunch because it met Mulder's First Rule of Road Food: they'd had to hunt for a parking place around the tractor-trailers that dominated the parking lot. Long-haul truckers, Mulder insisted, knew all the good places to eat, and Scully had to admit that the beer-bellied group of drivers up at the counter looked right at home there.

"I'll have that, then, please." She handed the menu back to the waitress. "And a Diet Coke."

"Yes, ma'am." She folded up her order pad and tucked it into her apron pocket. "Be just a few minutes, folks."

Scully frowned, staring after her as she walked away. " 'Ma'am'," she repeated mournfully. "When did I get to be 'ma'am'?"

Mulder looked up, obviously puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"I was 'miss.' Now I'm 'ma'am'. When did I cross the line?" She picked up her napkin and began to roll the edge restlessly between her fingertips. The moment she realized how the gesture gave away the depth of her agitation, she stilled her hands.

Mulder shrugged. "It's a Southern thing," he said absently, reaching for his glass of water. "Any woman over a certain age is 'ma'am'."

"But that's what I *mean*." She drew the last word out petulantly. "I'm *over a certain age* now. When did that happen?"

She watched Mulder realize his mistake. He glanced furtively around as if for a way to backtrack, and opted to drink some of his water instead.

"Mulder, you're such..." She cast around frustratedly for the right word. "You're such a *guy* sometimes." She thought he looked vaguely guilty, as if there ought to have been something he could have done even about so elemental a thing as his gender, if it had offended her.

"Scully, I'm -- " 

"Never mind." She unfolded her napkin and laid it in her lap. "It doesn't matter."

She spent a lot of time thinking about Mulder these days. To be fair, she had to admit she had always spent a lot of time thinking about him. It was the tone of the thought that had changed over the years, so gradually that she had been surprised when she finally saw the direction it had taken. One day she had finally had to ask herself whether she was only acting like she was in love or whether, in fact, she really was.

When had Mulder become the sun? When had her whole life begun to turn around his? It crossed her mind that this was probably -- no, it was definitely the longest interpersonal relationship of her adult life, and she couldn't bring herself to let it go anywhere at all. She wasn't sure what that said about her. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. 

She had grown used to this feeling of standing perpetually on the brink of something. It seemed normal now. She was almost comfortable here. The truth was that, even though she couldn't quite picture herself with Mulder, she knew by now that she'd never be able to picture herself with anybody else. 

It wasn't that there was anything so wrong with Mulder. The trouble, she knew, was that she was so resistant to the idea of being in love with anyone, to the idea of giving anyone that kind of power over her -- and when that person was Mulder, it was even more complicated.

She might trust Mulder with her life, she thought sadly, but she couldn't trust her own heart. Deep inside, she was afraid that maybe they hadn't been drawn together by anything so ordinary as a mutual attraction. Maybe it was really that the trials of their lives had ruined each of them for anybody else. No one else would understand; normal people would think either of them mad. Their shared history had not just brought them close: it had bound them together, back to back, guns drawn and trained upon a world neither of them dared to trust.

It was nothing, Scully reflected ruefully, that she had ever imagined basing a romance on.

"Look at this, Scully." Mulder's voice brought her back from her thoughts. "You can learn all kinds of trivia while you wait for your food." He ran his finger across a block of text on the printed paper placemat and read aloud, " 'Crawfish: From the Ecosystem to Your Plate'."

"You keep that up, Mulder, and I'll go vegan on you," she told him, and smiled a little at the thought. "I'd love to see you find me something to eat then."

He winked. "All the more cheeseburgers for me, my dear." He took another sip of water, and his expression became more serious. "So what do you think, Scully? See any connection between these three men?"

"Well, the government connection," she shrugged. "ATF. Bureau. State Department. It's obvious."

"Too obvious." He shook his head warily. "Too broad. Something's got to narrow it down. I was thinking they might all have some assignment or project in common."

"I can see how that might be a possibility with the first two, because Ed Tascone and Robert Frank were close in age, and would have been working at the same time," Scully answered. "But they both retired almost ten years ago, just about when Charles Vaccaro was joining the ATF. He wouldn't have worked with them."

"Unless," Mulder mused, "unless, unless..." He picked up the fork that laid on his napkin and tapped the tines against the printed placemat. "Unless it was a long-term project. Something ongoing." He looked up at Scully. "Maybe still going on right now."

"Then that would explain why Frank and Tascone still held security clearance even after they'd been retired for so long." She nodded slowly. "They were still involved."

"You know what else really stood out to me?" Mulder asked. "Even before they retired, neither of those men had the kind of job that would have required the high-level clearance they had. They had to be involved in something else. Something they wouldn't put on their resumes."

She smiled ruefully. "Oh, goody, Mulder," she sighed. "A covert project. Your favorite."

"What can I say, Scully?" He spread his hands and gave her a winning smile. "I know how to pick 'em, don't I?"

It must be involuntary, she decided as she looked at him. She'd seen him trying to charm women on purpose, but this wasn't quite the same thing -- and he wouldn't try it on her, anyway, would he...? She was spared by the reappearance of the waitress, who set an impressively heaping platter in front of Mulder. 

"Here you go, sir," she said, and added, presenting Scully with her more modest repast, "ma'am."

--- Continued ---


End file.
